


among the rags and the bones and the dirt

by Feather (lalaietha)



Series: (even if i could) make a deal with god [your blue-eyed boys related short-fic] [73]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Beds are liminal spaces, Bucky sleeps better with Steve there, C-PTSD, Disabled Character, Dissociative Disorders, Insomnia, Just Add Kittens, M/M, Mentally Ill Character, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery isn't linear, Somatoform Disorder, Steve has a lot of FEELINGS, Steve the human furnace, recovery is a spiral
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-22
Updated: 2015-02-22
Packaged: 2018-03-14 13:21:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3412121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalaietha/pseuds/Feather
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The way I see it, every life is a pile of good things and bad things. Hey, the good things don't always soften the bad things, but, vice versa, the bad things don't necessarily spoil the good things, or make them unimportant." - the Doctor, "Vincent and the Doctor"</p><p>Good things and bad things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	among the rags and the bones and the dirt

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is part of [**this series**](http://archiveofourown.org/series/132585), which is for short-fic associated with my fic [**your blue-eyed boys**](http://archiveofourown.org/series/107477), because I needed somewhere to stash it. 
> 
> I am totally catching up with putting together comment-fic and prompt-response fic, in this case combining thematic ones instead of spamming with a bunch of shorter ones.

*****

[one]

At some point in the night the temperature drops like a fucking stone. And sort of like the way you never see the frost creeping along a window-pane, it's just there's a moment where the frost is there and used to be a moment where it wasn't, Bucky's not exactly sure when the chill starts worming its way into his sleeping head, he just knows the minute he wakes up and hisses a too-quick breath out between his teeth, trying to hammer into his head that it's _still_ the God-damned condo he's in and _still_ just the bed he's on, even if he's cold. Tries to grind that through before the rest of the shit sets in. 

It half works. Sort of works. He only has to slide out from under the covers and away from the only warm things in the room (and that would be Steve and the idiot cat) to yank a sweatshirt out of a drawer and go turn the heat up. 

He's not surprised that it's snowing outside. Just disgusted. He turns the heat up and digs out the stupid barley-filled little pillow thing Romanova insisted on leaving and throws it in the microwave. All in all he's crawling back into bed and dragging the extra blanket over just about the time Steve's starting to wake up.

Steve probably isn't cold. Steve's _never_ cold. And Bucky might resent him more for that right now, in a shallow, meaningless way, if it weren't for how he radiates that heat, too. Or if he weren't so damn happy to roll over on his side and curl in around Bucky and share the it, either. So that he's actually better than the barley-bag Bucky doesn't really like right against his skin, just puts near himself so maybe it'll do a bit for the air under the blankets. 

The kitten just uses the opportunity to crawl under the comforter and curl up by the barley-bag. 

"It's fucking snowing," Bucky says, knowing he's twisted like wire and waiting for the covers and the shirt and the stupid bag to help and let him unwind, so his body stops arguing with his head. 

"M'sorry," Steve says. He's still mostly asleep. Fortunately. But even so he moves for a minute or two to pull his hand up to the base of Bucky's skull, pressing fingers carefully into some of the tension and it's mostly that this is nothing, nothing that comes with cold that helps. Steve's hand falls to the top of Bucky's left shoulder, presses firm circles with his palm for a minute until Bucky can close his eyes and make himself unwrap his arms from around himself, move the pillow to somewhere he can actually sleep on it without waking up in enough pain he has to notice. 

Steve settles up close against him, works his hand under sweat-shirt and sleep-shirt. 

Absently, belatedly, Bucky remembers to say, "Don't fucking apologize for the weather, Steve." 

"Mnn I'll apologize for whatever I wan'," Steve says, so sleepy the retort is probably really, truly automatic. 

Bucky shakes his head. But by now he's warming up and he can't really be bothered to answer. 

 

*****

[two]

It's December 24th and he notices. Actually, the day _before_ is when he notices, hitting the real world, the rest of the world out there that has dates and holidays and a rhythm beyond what their own heads throw at them, the way the drunk hits the wall on one side of the alley and the fucking thing about it is that noticing might even be _why_.

On the 23rd of December he notices what day it is. And more important what day comes _next_.

The 24th starts with nausea and a headache he can't shake. He doesn't know how it'll end but now, in the middle, it comes into focus around the mess. Around the lamp in shattered pieces on the floor, the hole and tear in the wall, and the broken dining room chair. As the day hits _middle_ he's sitting in the loose, open square of space made by the arms and sides of the futon and the couch, back against the wall and arms around his knees, the mess still there, and nothing he can do. 

He should get up and clean it up. He should _get up_ , he should fix the wall, he should fix the mess or if he can't he should _leave_. He should get the fuck out from between the building's walls, the closed space. He should remind himself the world exists, he should - 

Do anything but sit here and wait, do anything but - 

He sits against the wall, the lamp still broken, the hole still ripped in the wall, the chair still torn apart, and waits. Like a guilty kid, like a dog who dug in the fucking garbage, he sits and he waits. The kitten bumps her head against his ankle, gets up on her hind-legs to lick at his hands; he doesn't respond, and eventually she goes to sit on the cat-tree and make unhappy sounds. 

He just waits. 

And when Steve gets home Bucky refuses to look at the door. Refuses to watch Steve put down what he's carrying and ignore it like it doesn't matter, shed his coat and drop it on the arm-chair, kick his shoes off and forget about them. Carefully step over the broken shards of glass and pottery that used to be the lamp. 

Steve sits down beside him. Settles so one leg half-stretches under Bucky's bent knees and the other knee leans against Bucky's back, works one arm in between where Bucky's ribcage almost touches his legs, and wraps the other around him to meet it. Rests his head on Bucky's shoulder. 

And it makes Bucky fucking sick, knots up his throat and his stomach in humiliation, that there's a part of him that relaxes. That lets go. That falls over in relief that that's _all_ and then curves towards it like that's _everything_ , and fuck this shit and fuck _him -_

He can't make himself pull away, can't make himself _not_ relax a little against Steve's hold, but he does make himself say, "This can't fucking be worth it, Steve," say it and sound like himself. 

"Yeah, it can," Steve says and Bucky stares at his hands, at the bent knees beside them. 

" _How_?" The word comes out like something hit him because otherwise it'll crack and he can't even stand the fucking idea. 

He can hear the kitten jumping down, one perch to the next, until she hits the floor. 

And Steve pulls him closer, like somehow he's figured out what to ignore and what to do, like somehow he actually doesn't fucking care how fucking pathetic this is, coming home to find Bucky here, like this, again. After just long enough to think maybe it's done, maybe he's moved past this, and then see he hasn't. Can't. 

"You're here," Steve says. Like he actually means it. Like he's not upset. "I can touch you and I can argue with you." 

Bucky closes his eyes, and he just fucking lost it _again_ , just fucking wrecked so much _again_ , there shouldn't _be_ a fucking world where that just doesn't - 

"It's fucking Christmas Eve," he makes himself say, evenly. "You should be damn well doing _something_. You should fucking be ready to go to Mass, at least." 

He feels the movement against his shoulder, feels Steve shake his head and hears the breath like the start of a laugh, rueful maybe but other things, too, other pieces Bucky can't get a hold on right now. "Bucky, the last place I need to be right now is - anywhere else, really." He resettles them both a little, so he can rest his forehead against the side of Bucky's skull and say, "Bucky, I want to be here. Now. Promise," before Bucky can argue with him. 

Before he can figure out how. 

So in the end he can only manage, "Fuck, Steve," and when he does Steve says, "I know," and they don't move for a while. And Bucky ends up thinking that one count of useful for fucking Erskine and the first Stark is Steve'd have a hard fucking time reaching all the way around him, if he were still so fucking small. 

He probably shouldn't be grateful that Steve can, but the traitor part basking in fucking relief doesn't much care. And it answers the stab the rest of him tries, the way it tries to turn sharp and vicious, pointing out he could still fucking break Steve just by being fucking careless . . . it half doesn't give a _shit_ and half dismisses it, all of it, with _but we won't_ and then threatens to remind him just how _fucking_ hard he can, how fucking hard he _did_ desperately, so fucking desperately want someone to touch him, even soulless and empty and lost, and what that could mean. 

It's hard to breathe for a second. And Steve moves one hand to rest against Bucky's back, rub slow, wide circles up his spine until the tightness eases and the threat backs off. 

"It's fine, Buck," Steve says, and somehow fucking means it. "Promise." He kisses the side of Bucky's head and adds, "I don't want to be anywhere else." 

After a minute of it being hard to breathe, again, for different reasons, Bucky says, "You're fucking crazy, you know that." 

"I'm okay with you thinking that," Steve says. 

After a minute, Bucky gives in against the pull of Steve's arm and leans on him, for a while. This time when the kitten rubs her face against his ankle he touches her head, enough that she doesn't whine. 

 

******

[three]

 

He's on the deck because he's trying not to be gone. The air is cold enough to prickle against his bare arm, collar, neck - not just chill but the scraping kind. Biting. And maybe. Maybe if he can stand here long enough to hate that he can go back in go back to bed and not have to turn around, leave a note, a text, _leave_. 

It still catches him. Sometimes. 

Like he can decide things about the inside of his head, about memories, but something raw-tiny-panicked doesn't give a flying fuck what he decides and just waits, waits for one second with his guard down. Waits to remind. 

Waits to remind him he doesn't know if anything in his head is true. Not really. That all his memories are _fucking_ tainted hybrid things and he has to trust them anyway. Take them on trust. 

They bleed. Like ink into cloth, like stains into skin, like blood into sand. The edges of memories are slashed open and porous and things crossover and he hates, he hates the ones that bleed. They still do it. There's always something else. No way to tell if it's real. No way to tell if his _stupid_ fucking brain is just mixing and matching from the bits that weave themselves thick. That run together, that mix. 

Especially the ones that he wants to hide from, hide in older things, kinder things, better things and taint them, contaminate them, until he can't trust anything. 

Can't trust so many memories of cold air, night air, cold night touch on his skin, his fingers, the tips of his nose: Brooklyn, Bastogne, Berlin, Богото́л - _fuck_ too many places, too many times. And they're all dead, they're all gone except Steve, he can't go anywhere else, can't split the burden of crawling to anyone and saying _tell me, tell me_. 

Begging _tell me what really happened, tell me which ones are real, tell me -_

Meaning _so I can carve it out_ meaning _so I can stop, so I can pull it apart again, so I can get them out of what I want, so I can remember, so I can have that again._

They're dead. He can't. They're dead and they kept secrets, protected the dead and the irony would be fucking hysterical if it didn't eat at him this much. Is fucking hysterical anyway. 

He just can't enjoy it. 

And can't, he can't - he feels like a kid pestering, annoying, demanding one more story, one more thing told over again and the questions are fucking horrible anyway. 

_Did we ever kill this many -_

_Did we ever blow up -_

_Was there ever a hole in the ground filled with bodies_ , and on, and on, and on. It's enough to make him fucking crazy. Would be enough to make him fucking crazy, except he already is. 

Night air, cold nose, freezing fingers - he doesn't know. And he should be past this, he should be _fucking past this by now_ he keeps thinking he _is_ and then it's this again. Time stretches longer and longer and _then it's this again_ and fucking wishing the fall from here could kill him. 

It won't. It can't. He can't. 

So fucking much he can't. 

He stays where he is long enough to shiver before his head lets him go back inside. 

 

******

[four]

 

When Steve stops to think about it, they've shared beds for a long time. A _long_ time, ever since they were kids and he first got mad at Bucky for sleeping in a chair or on the floor when he insisted on doing sick-watch and Bucky got mad back and said fine then, move over and share. 

And then because of cold, when the couch-cushions meant it radiated up through them from the floor, or after they were completely on their own and it was cheaper not to have much heat and two bodies were warmer than one. And then because of cold _again_ , because of that miserable winter on the front and then after - 

And now. And now he's mostly grateful Bucky doesn't mind sleeping with Steve either wrapped around him or more or less turning him into a blanket, because neither of them had been particularly close sleepers before (girls had complained about that, with Bucky, actually), but now -

He's just grateful. 

And he's almost through waking up to get up when Bucky comes back to bed, rubbing the side of his neck with his left wrist like it's bothering him. 

"Sorry," he says, shifting back down under the covers. "Little fuzzy idiot stepped in her own shit and took a while to notice. Figured I'd clean it up for tomorrow."

"S'okay," Steve says, as Bucky settles his pillow; when he's still, Steve works his top arm around Bucky's waist and fixes his own pillow with the other. "She's a baby." 

"She's an idiot," Bucky says, with irritation that's basically fooling nobody. Steve kisses the back of his head, and waits: Bucky relaxing is still a process, not an event, but this close Steve can feel him let go just a little, as the little part of his subconscious that still keeps looking for the cost for everything shuts up and switches off, because - for whatever God-given reason - here is safe. 

"Grouch," Steve tells him, and Bucky retorts, "Shut up and go back to sleep."

A few minutes later the kitten hops up on the bed and starts furiously grooming one foot, like having been wiped clean is an affront. When she's done she comes and tries to settle just above Bucky's head and Steve would let her except for her bad habit of hitting him in the face with her tail when she dreams. So instead he scoops her up and dumps her on the other side of Bucky before settling his arm back around Bucky's waist. 

It takes him a while to drift back to sleep, not least because he has to do that with the silly cat at least three more times, but that's okay. It means that by the time Steve drops off Bucky's mostly as relaxed as he gets, on the edge of sleep, and Steve can settle him a little bit closer when he does. 

 

******

[five]

 

The fucking Hell of it is, sometimes he does it to himself. Doesn't notice, just like you don't notice you're picking at a scab, just like he doesn't notice he's trying to appease the despised dead with a fractured bone. You don't notice until the blood is everywhere or the bright white burn behind your eyes reminds you why you were trying not to fucking do that in the first place. 

Except it's in his _head_. Except it's a stray fucking thought and in the dangerous moments like going to sleep or waking up or actually _any fucking time_ there's not something making enough noise he can hold onto it to drown the noise in his head, stray thoughts slip and dig in and he's here, sitting on the floor beside the bed, trying to breathe and to make the memory stop, trying not to see the moment a woman's (girl's, Christ almost a girl still) skin parted and viscera showed against his hand - 

And breathe. And, fuck, _breathe_ and don't claw, don't close his hand on anything, and don't - _fuck, Steve, I_ \- 

And he loses his hold on the room enough that when Steve's taking his hands, each of his curving around the back of each of Bucky's and pulling them away from - from fucking Hell who knows, whatever he's doing, when Steve takes his hands Bucky starts and everything swims for a second, nauseous and wrong, until he's in the bedroom, until he's on the floor with Steve's hands on his and the cat walking back and forth along the side of the bed behind him, making that noise halfway between a purr and a complaint while she does. 

Still hard to breathe. Words are too far away. When Steve says, "You okay?" Bucky shakes his head, sharp and small. And still _wrong_ , still sick, so when Steve tries, "C'mere?" he has to do it again, shake his head again. 

"I can't," he says, and that's all that comes, and then, "you can't - " and he doesn't have an end to the thought, doesn't have, can't find the way to say _you can't, I can't, I'll get this on you, I can't get this on you and it's too much_ except the words are fucking stupid the words are inane they don't _touch_ what he means and how much fucking rotting foul bloody _shit_ lives in him - and then he's afraid, afraid for a second Steve will hear it, hear enough of what's in his head to know he should run. 

Tries to snarl at how fucking _stupid_ that is and can't, can't, can't do it can't find it can't - 

The way his hands twist around to clutch at Steve's - he doesn't mean to do that. But Steve's already tightening his grip and he says, "Hey. It's okay, I'm not going anywhere. It's fine. Just think about breathing." 

(And it's a bloom like choking slime, like algae coating his throat and his chest: _think about breathing_ how many fucking people have to think about breathing, you _pathetic_ piece of - )

Steve's carefully putting Bucky's left hand down, disentangling their fingers; before Bucky can think what that means Steve's already saying, "You can feel a bit more over here," like it's nothing, like this is nothing, resting his hand on Bucky's right, both hands there, now. 

The words tangle up, _don't_ and _you don't kn_ \- and _you shouldn't_ \- each one hitting the part where Steve won't listen, Steve won't hear, tangling up with the others and dying, closing his throat. Can't say it, won't hear it. So give up. For once _give up_.

Breathe. 

And it helps when Steve bends his head, shouldn't and does. It helps when Steve bends his head and touches his mouth to Bucky's palm. Hauls the whole world off-balance and wraps it around that, around that skin and the feeling of Steve's breath and his mouth and his skin. Helps. 

One hand curls around Bucky's, one thumb strokes over his palm; Steve runs the other slowly along Bucky's forearm, fingers not quite encircling, that thumb pressing along the track of the artery underneath. Muscle underneath like wires. Bucky knows that. Knows they're like that. 

And he turns Bucky's hand over. Kisses the back, knuckles. Curls one hand's fingers into Bucky's. Traces with the second finger of the other, traces . . . veins. Bones. The tops of knuckles and the dips between. The line of each finger and the web between them and thumb. Palm, wrist - 

Bucky watches. And he can breathe, but not deep. And his head feels like it's drowning in a cesspit of - _something_ \- 

And part of him tries to reach for the familiar. For aggravation, for frustration, for wry and bitter and the shape of exhaustion that gives him something to hold onto, and can't. Can't. Too far, too little, too weak, _whatever_ , it's not there. Irony, bitterness, derision it's all out of reach and he hates it. So much. 

Steve kisses the back of his hand again and then says, "The floor's cold, Bucky. Come back to bed where it's warm."

 

*****

[six]

 

There are some things Steve would say if he could think of anyone he felt like he could talk to. About this kind of thing. There are lots of people he can talk to in general, thank God (and he does), from even Tony all the way to Sam, but some of them . . . are basically the kind of things he'd talk to Bucky about, except for the part where as it happens, they're about Bucky. 

And one of them would be . . . but he doesn't know how to say, but maybe - 

Maybe it's just he wants to say, _When you get down to it, if you look at the crisis point, if you pinpoint the moment . . . he threw it off, broke everything, broke reality into pieces,_ for me. 

_Because of me, yeah. But - and_ for _me._

If maybe he could explain, to someone, _And I didn't bring anything good. Anything about me did nothing but hurt him, make them hurt him, rip his world apart and that means ripping him apart, too, because that's how it works by then._

_And he could let me die or rip everything out, everything he knew, and he didn't let me die._

_He did that. For me._

It's not something he even thinks about that much. Not . . . _like that_ , in so many words (or would be so many words if he said it out loud). It's not that it's locked down or locked away, it's just . . . it's like someone managed to make the perfect model of a soap-bubble out of glass, turning something that's normally ephemeral and lost into something that could be permanent, eternal, except it's so incredibly, unbelievably easy to break. 

Not that he has any doubt about it, not that he doesn't think that Sam, for instance, wouldn't get it, it's just . . . 

Maybe not quite. And maybe what he really wants right now is his mother, which is frankly hilarious and he's okay with facing that, but it'd be nice to acknowledge it, to say it out loud. 

It's not like he doesn't wonder, sometimes, where they'd've ended up, how things would have turned out, if everything had been different. If they'd both managed to get home from the War, or if there wasn't a war or they didn't get tangled up in it. How they'd've lived, who Bucky eventually would have married, whether he, Steve, would have dropped dead of the heart failure he was always racing before or after he managed to hit thirty. 

And it's not like, eighty years ago, it wasn't him wondering sometimes why _Bucky_ bothered, and maybe how much was just pity, charity, or obligation and then, eventually, habit. And so what it's like to know it wasn't. 

To hear _if what I remembered was real, I wanted it. All of it, everything I could remember._

To know that most of "it" is _you_. 

It's hard to guess what they might have been, because so much of what they _are_ is about the marks of specific things, events, moments, needs. The only thing Steve regrets even a little are the parts that come with pain and fear and misery, and the parts where he didn't know enough to stop some of that when he could have. 

Most of it doesn't matter now; it's over, it's done and he can't change any of it. 

The only things he's even a little bit unhappy with now are the same, and here he'll do what he can, when he can, and that's the only part that does matter. 

And it's usually the middle of the night when he thinks this stuff, like now and so far there isn't anyone he can say it to, without getting it mixed up and polluted with defensiveness and explanations, and that's pretty much on him, he knows. But right now Bucky's asleep with his head on Steve's shoulder and his left arm resting across Steve's ribs, left hand half-circling Steve's lower right arm, and he's been asleep, more or less, since ten o'clock and it's one thirty now, and if there isn't _enough_ Steve can give him, he can sometimes give him this. 

It's something, anyway. 


End file.
